


but to her i taste of nothing at all

by amessofgaywords



Category: Wynonna Earp (TV)
Genre: F/F, a corruption of the five things trope to fit my interests, featuring the many girls nicole haught has kissed, i have a headcanon that nicole has a paranoia of rejection, may we all have the confidence of nicole rayleigh haught, we stan an awkward pining lesbian, which turned into this mess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-23
Updated: 2019-03-23
Packaged: 2019-11-28 18:10:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,436
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18211787
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amessofgaywords/pseuds/amessofgaywords
Summary: “You don’t wanna kissanyone?” Emily says like she can’t believe it. “Not even Leo DiCaprio?”Nicole mulls it over, giving it serious thought. She does like Jack's haircut, fromTitanic, but more because she envies the way his hair is short and doesn’t get in his face and tickle his shoulders. And she likes that he gets to wear a fancy suit and suspenders.“No.” Her thoughts drift to Kate Winslet, the stunning Rose DeWitt Bukater, and wonders if maybe she wants to kissher.or four times nicole kisses a girl and one time a girl kisses her back.





	but to her i taste of nothing at all

**Author's Note:**

> our poor little baby gay nicole haught, god bless her soul, just really wants to kiss pretty girls. thought i would throw this up during the fight for wynonna, since i don't have enough money for a billboard and i can't draw. enjoy.
> 
> title from she by dodie.

**I.**

Her first kiss happens when she’s twelve.

She and her best friend at the time, Emily Gringovich, are hanging out at Emily’s house in the hills. There are trees all around, and Emily can hang from their lower boughs with her knees for a while without getting dizzy, so she’s trying to teach Nicole. And they’re talking.

“Isn’t Richie Waters hot?” Emily asks, her long blonde hair falling into her face and blocking Nicole’s view of her freckles. Her glasses slip dangerously off of her nose, and she giggles as she swings upwards and pulls her legs underneath her so that she straddles the branch.

“Ems!” Nicole swats at her friend’s arm and laughs in disbelief, even if she doesn’t know why. People talk about how hot other people are all the time. She hears about it often, in TV shows and books and movies.

But something about it feels weird, when it’s coming out of Emily’s mouth, in the grove of trees that has always been _their_ special place. It’s like Richie Waters is taking it over, moving in with his sweaty neck and loud voice that likes to interrupt the teachers when they’re talking.

But Emily is biting her lip and looking nervous, so Nicole gets over her fear that everything is about to change (she always was a bit dramatic) and says, “yeah, I guess.”

“He really is,” Emily says dreamily, swinging one leg over the tree branch and sliding down so she hangs from it by her fingertips, dropping lightly to the ground. “I want to kiss him.”

Nicole hums, because she didn’t know that was a thing. _She_ certainly didn’t want to kiss any boys they knew. She didn’t even want to kiss any famous boys, like Justin Timberlake or Leonardo DiCaprio (even though she’s going to be Jack from _Titanic_ for Halloween this year).

“Who do you want to kiss?” Emily asks as Nicole flips off the branch, landing in a heap on the ground. Her embarrassment saves her from answering the question as Emily laughs at her and tugs her onto the ground to stare at clouds, but only a second later she asks again.

“I dunno.” Nicole shrugs, frowning. “No one, I guess.”

“You don’t wanna kiss _anyone_?” Emily says like she can’t believe it. “Not even Leo DiCaprio?” (Emily knows about Nicole’s small obsession with _Titanic_ ).

Nicole mulls it over, giving it serious thought. She does like Jack’s haircut, but more because she envies the way his hair is short and doesn’t get in his face and tickle his shoulders. And she likes that he gets to wear a fancy suit and suspenders.

“No.” Her thoughts drift to Kate Winslet, the stunning Rose DeWitt Bukater, and wonders if maybe she wants to kiss _her_. 

She doesn’t get a lot of time to think about it, because Emily is saying, “I want my first kiss to be over with. So I don’t have to think about it.”

Nicole doesn’t get the hint right away. When she does, she smiles. “Do you mean you want to kiss me?”

“Ew! No.” Emily shoves the redhead playfully, and Nicole’s grin falters. “I don’t want to _kiss_ you. I just want to get my first kiss over with. So I should kiss you, and then I will.”

Nicole thinks this is a perfectly viable plan, so she says okay and rolls over so she’s facing her friend. Emily giggles and reaches up to shove her glasses higher on her face, and Nicole smiles at her. They both laugh, trying to dispel the awkwardness in the air, and, in what feels like seconds, Emily has leaned forward and briefly pressed her lips to Nicole’s, puckering tight and laughing the second she pulls away.

It’s so quick, not even a millisecond, but Nicole feels it then.

She feels a twisting, deep in her gut, and a twinge in her chest, and her lips tingle while Emily rolls back over, still talking about Richie Waters.

Nicole knows that she’s different then.

Two months later, her and Emily have a big fight (she doesn’t even remember about what) and they split. She feels her heart shatter for more than just their friendship.

**II.**

Nicole knows, by high school, that something is very, very wrong with her.

She’s friendly with most of the girls in her grade (benefits of going to a small school in a small town) but she knows that none of them get a sinking feeling in their gut when talking about boys, like something is terribly _off_ , and she can say without a doubt that none of them feel like they should avert their eyes in the locker rooms.

The only person she really trusts, out of all of them, is Jasmine. She’s smart, and pretty, and independent, and she’s on the freshman basketball team with Nicole. She’s new to school this year, and Nicole still feels honored that she’d want to be friends with her, the skinny, awkward, nerdy girl on the outskirts of everything.

Jasmine invites her over, almost every weekend, to play video games in her basement. She has tons of Nintendo games, and Nicole is terrible at them, but Jasmine laughs and shows her the right way to play anyway, and whenever she presses up behind her and moves her hands around on the controller, Nicole feels... _things_.

They’re hanging out one afternoon when Jasmine starts talking about this boy she used to date, back at her old school, and Nicole is so awed by her sophistication and worldliness that she asks what it was like to kiss him.

“It was okay,” Jasmine shrugs. “He was really gross and stuff, always trying to use his tongue. But it felt nice. Like sparks.”

Nicole thinks back to her kiss with Emily, tries to remember if she felt sparks or not.

She decides she needs to retest the hypothesis.

She doesn’t know what makes her do it – maybe some long-abandoned human instinct swirling inside of her, maybe a craving to understand the feeling Jasmine is raving about – but she leans forward and lightly presses her lips to the other girl’s.

Jasmine is still as stone underneath her, and after a few sparkless seconds Nicole knows she has done something very, very wrong.

Jasmine pulls away sharply, eyes wide and mouth hanging open. “What the hell?” she says, and Nicole doesn’t have an answer, can only sit there in pure mortification as Jasmine stands up and moves around aimlessly, looking a little lost.

“I think you should go,” she says to Nicole. “My parents will be home soon.” 

They both know it’s a lie.

The next afternoon, Nicole returns from school to find her parents waiting with stern faces, the phone clutched in their hands.

Apparently Jasmine’s parents called Nicole’s parents, and now she’s getting lectured on how it’s “not right” to kiss people like Jasmine, _girls_ , girls like her, and that “that lifestyle” isn’t appropriate for people her age.

She wonders at what age it starts being appropriate, but she doesn’t say anything.

It’s the first time she hears the word “lesbian” and something clicks.

She still doesn’t say anything.

Her parents stop glaring at her eventually, but nothing is the same. Jasmine won’t look her in the eye, and the rest of her friends have stopped sitting with her. Word seems to have spread around school that Nicole Haught is a dyke, and she starts spending her free periods in the library.

**III.**

The last thing she expects at college is to find a friend with benefits.

And yet, somehow, that is what happens.

Talia is a year younger, closeted, just like Nicole once was, and gorgeous, like, drop-dead so. Nicole’s honoured the other girl even looks at her, let alone wants to sleep with her.

It starts with a messy, drunken kiss in the bathroom at some party, a party like the ones Nicole started making herself go to because she wasn’t hiding anymore, she was out, she was okay. It escalates until they’re meeting up practically every week for some good old-fashioned stress relief.

Talia doesn’t like to pillow talk, or talk at all really. She’ll text Nicole at some random point during the day, and Nicole will identify a good time for them to meet up. The redhead hardly ever initiates the trysts, mostly from fear, as if doing so will push Talia away.

Truthfully, Nicole’s just glad that finally, she’s kissing a girl who actually seems to want to kiss her back.

Then she meets Travis, Talia’s boyfriend.

And even though Talia seems to like Nicole just fine (she’s certainly not complaining in bed), even though she knows that no one at the liberal university close to Toronto is going to judge them, she’s still in the closet, still not okay coming out. And Nicole is okay with that, she really is. She’s fine to keep things on a physical level.

But when Travis shows up, and she doesn’t know how many of the kisses between the two of them are fake and how many are real? Well, then she gets a little uncomfortable sharing.

So she breaks things off with Talia. The sex might have been good, but it’s not worth the drama, and she’s tired of trying with people who can never love her back.

**IV.**

Nicole dates a few more girls in college, and all of them are nice enough, but nothing is perfect with any of them. She thinks back to Jasmine, to the sparks she spoke so highly of, and laughs wryly when she thinks of how naïve she was, to think that she could form a connection like that with anyone.

And then, there’s Shae.

Shae is pretty, and funny, and bright, and she kisses hard in the club and says yes when Nicole tries to marry her and takes her to a Britney Spears concert, and everything seems perfect.

Except it isn’t, because her new wife is not the same woman she met in Vegas.

Don’t get her wrong, Shae is great. She’s still pretty and funny and bright, and she’s also ambitious and independent and doesn’t take shit from anyone.

But she’s also nitpicky about things. And a bit uptight. And she maybe drives Nicole insane, just a little bit, for the three months and two weeks that they live together.

Towards the end, Nicole starts to feel the sparks thinning. She desperately tries to bring them back to that night, that time in Vegas when they felt invincible, when every kiss was like pure electricity pouring into her body. Unfortunately, there is no such feeling left, and Shae’s mouth feels dead inside. So when the job opens up in Purgatory, Nicole cuts her losses and accepts, feeling like it may be time.

Her and Shae part amicably enough, but she still feels the pit of loss in her chest. She wishes, more than anything, that she could go back to that time when she was twelve, when life was simple and the people you kissed were supposed to like you back, always. She misses the time when she knew someone was looking forward to seeing her, was happy to greet her with a tangling of mouths and a mixing of smiles. She doesn’t think that that’s real anymore, that joy at connecting with somebody. It can’t be, not after the losses she’s suffered.

So she takes Calamity Jane (Shae never liked the cat anyway) and moves to Alberta and prays it will be better there. Maybe she can grow old alone, a crazy cat lady.

**V.**

“Waves, what is your problem? I just thought-”

She’s cut off when persistent lips crash into hers, and _oh,_ this is what kissing is supposed to feel like.

Sparks.

Fireworks, really.

Waverly’s hands are everywhere, her body is hot and her mouth is soft and before Nicole knows it her back is hitting the couch and Waverly is everywhere at once.

It feels so nice. That’s the only word, _nice,_ because she can feel the sparks, sure, but there’s also this warm, heavy feeling in her chest that screams _this is right, this is what you’ve been waiting for._

“Do you know what I’ve always wanted?” 

Then they’re not kissing anymore, and the voice saying _right_ changes abruptly to _wrong._

“What?” Nicole will humour her, if it means they can eventually keep kissing.

“To jump out of a plane at 30,000 feet. Yeah, to swim, far, far out into the ocean, until I can’t see the bottom anymore. To eat geoduck.”

“Isn’t that the one that kind of looks like a-” Nicole cuts in, but Waverly nods, and she bites her lip in thought, shoving that one on the back-burner for later.

“Yeah, it is. Point is, I’ve always wanted to do things that scared me, but, well, it’s a little bit harder to be brazen when the thing that you want, that- that scares you to death, is sitting... right in front of you.”

It clicks in Nicole’s brain, then. “I scare you?” She doesn’t know why it’s such a pleasant thought.

“Yes, yes, you do. Because... I don’t want to be friends. When I think about what I want to do most in this world... it’s you.” _Oh._ “Oh god, that sounded so much more romantic in my head.” Nicole chuckles, because Waverly is too damn adorable and she wants to keep kissing, now, please. “Just, uh, jump in, any time, Nicole, because I really, really don’t know how to do this.”

Nicole doesn’t really either, but she can pretend. “Oh, sure you do.” 

Waverly leans in and her eyes dart to Nicole’s lips once, twice. “Maybe you should stop talking, too.”

She tangles her hand in Waverly’s scarf and tugs. “Maybe you should make me.” _Wow, that’s smooth, Haught, where were those moves a few years ago?_

Waverly does kiss her then, and the _right_ feeling is back, that warmth that blossoms in her chest simply at a chaste press of Waverly’s lips to hers.

The sparks are spreading over her entire body, and she’s so happy that she doesn’t think even Nedley coming in and finding them basically defiling his couch could burst her bubble. Not even Wynonna, Dolls, and stupid Black Badge could make her unhappy right now, with her whole body pressed to Waverly’s and finally, _finally,_ someone she loves loving her back.

Waverly tastes like the future, and Nicole wants to enjoy every second of it.

If she doesn’t get fired first, that is.

They should really stop kissing on the couch.

**Author's Note:**

> come yell at me @amessofgaywords on twitter.


End file.
